A computer dashboard or ‘dashboard’ generally, refers to a personalized desktop portal that enables a user to easily set preferences and policies with respect to display of and access to information and applications. A typical dashboard can display items of interest such as stock quotes, email message quotas, calendar entries/appointments, clocks, tasks, traffic information, access to favorite news feeds, etc. Oftentimes ‘widgets’ are used to display the personalized items upon a dashboard.
In computer programming, a widget (or control) refers to an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that facilitates display of an information arrangement customizable or changeable by the user. One defining characteristic of a widget is the ability to provide a single specialized GUI for direct manipulation of or access to a given type of data (e.g., email, calendar, weather). Widgets are often described as basic visual building blocks which, when combined in an application, hold the data processed by an application and the available interactions related to the specific data.
Essentially, in information technology, a ‘dashboard’ is often described as a GUI that, somewhat resembling an automobile's dashboard, organizes and presents information in a manner that is easy to interpret. However, unlike an automobile's dashboard, a computer-based dashboard is more likely to be interactive and thus easily tailored to a user's preferences. In other words, users are able to integrate personalized information upon their dashboard for easy access.
Today, some computer products that attempt to integrate information from multiple components into a unified display often refer to their displays as ‘dashboards.’ For example, a product that obtains information from the local operating system in a computer, from one or more resident or remote applications, and from one or more remote sites via the Internet may present the collaborated information as though it originates from a single source. As described above, this is often referred to as a ‘dashboard’ view of the data.